This is a stunning stat and shows how out of touch Washington and Wall Street are with Main Street.  Imagine if gas prices spike $2.00 per gallon.    CNN writes,

A majority, or 64%, of Americans don’t have enough cash on hand to handle a $1,000 emergency expense, according to a survey by the National Foundation for Credit Counseling, or NFCC, released on Wednesday.

Only 36% said they would tap their rainy day funds for an emergency. The rest of the 2,700 people polled said that they would have to go to other extremes to cover an unexpected expense, such as borrowing money or taking out a cash advance on a credit card.

Back in the 1990’s we used to discuss and joke with our European friends, who have relatively strong safety nets,  as to why Americans worked so hard and mutually concluded it was because they knew they were two paychecks from the street.   No joke anymore.